Al Kasum Regional Council in the Naqab must address safety hazards at Bedouin high school

12/01/2016

"Every movement of students from their entry to their departure from school exposes them to the risk of getting hurt."

On 12 January 2016, Adalah sent a letter to the legal adviser for the Ort schools, the director of the Education Department of the Regional Council of Al-Kasum, and to the Director of the Education Ministry's Department in the South calling for immediate action to deal with hazardous and safety defects at the Al Atrash high school in the Naqab with 280 students. Adalah submitted the letter based on many complaints from parents of students at the school.

Adalah Attorney Sawsan Zaher, who prepared the letter, contended that the safety hazards must be addressed immediately. These include:

The access roads to the school are unpaved and students cannot walk on these footpaths safely;

The construction waste in the school yard includes scaffolding, iron pipes, exposed wires and dirt and dangerous building materials;

The school yard is located next to a high-voltage wire;

There are dangerous places throughout the school, however the school does not prevent access to them, allowing the students to sometimes play in these areas;

In one of the entrances to the school, there is an open water tube.

Due to the lack of safe conditions, even the students' sports lessons are held inside the school building. In addition, the school is not connected to the electricity grid, and electricity generators are located near classrooms and cause a lot of noise hampering students' concentration. There are many photographs that show the dangerous and poor conditions at the school.

Attorney Zaher argued in the letter that, "Every movement of students from their entry to their departure from the school exposes them to the risk of getting hurt by all of the sharp materials in the inner and outer perimeter of the school. This situation constitutes a real danger to their lives and the safety of their bodies."

Adalah argued that these conditions constitute a serious violation of the students’ rights: "The dangerous defects that have been described and documented above affect the clear, legal rights of students to education, and their right to have a safe learning environment and the use of a school building."

Hind Salman, Adalah's Field Researcher in the Naqab who visited the school, stressed that: "It seems that the school opened without any control by the qualified bodies responsible for school safety. The aforementioned hazards make it imperative for the concerned authorities to begin addressing them, as they are extremely dangerous to the safety of students, staff teachers, and to all visitors to the school."